Page 20 of The Conqueror’s Lady (The Knights of Brittany #2)

F ayth heard the yelling begin a distance away from the keep and grow closer and louder. Putting down the tunic she mended, she opened the shutters of her window and tried to find the source of it. Recognising the voices then, she knew that Sir Eudes was in the middle of whatever was happening. Standing on her toes, she leaned up as far as she could, but still could see nothing.

Giles had asked her not to leave her chambers this day, but surely he did not mean she could not go into the storage room next to their room. Opening the door to that room, she went to the window and looked out of it. Unfortunately, she could see everything that was happening from her place there.

Sir Eudes and his men surrounded a bound and gagged man who lay twisted on the ground. As he struggled, to get up or to get away, she knew not which, they kicked him and pushed him down. When he fell on his back, she got a glimpse of his face.

Siward!

She nearly fell from the shock of seeing him there, but she knew that if Lord Huard captured him he would die a slow and painful death. Looking around, she prayed that Nissa was not caught as well.

Fayth needed to get down there, needed to stop this from happening. Giles must…he must…She paused for a moment and thought on what he could do.

Siward was marked as a slave, a serf, someone attached to the lord’s lands and not free to move about. He’d been found on Giles’s lands. As a Norman lord, Giles had to comply and allow the man’s return to his rightful owner. With the bishop here, observing and noting everything for Duke William, Giles had no choice.

The thought made her sick. Fighting against the choking feeling, she knew she must do something. Opening the door, she rushed to the steps, but Giles’s voice, asking her to stay within, came back to her.

A man’s life was at stake, she decided in that moment, and she would have to face his anger later.

Racing through the keep, she ran to the steward’s closet and grabbed one of the parchment scrolls that listed her father’s tenants. She prayed there was a name close to Siward’s that she could find to make the case to the bishop. Pushing her way through the growing crowd, she arrived in front of the spectacle just as Giles did. His anger was obvious when he noticed her.

‘My lord,’ she called out to him.

‘Lady, you do not belong here. Return to your chambers now,’ he ordered.

‘My lord bishop, I have the rolls of tenants…’

He reached her then, caught her hand as she held out the scroll and dragged her aside, stopping her from saying anything more by squeezing her arm.

‘Get you gone from here,’ he ordered through clenched jaws. ‘Now.’

‘I can help in this,’ she began.

‘You are the cause of this. Now get back inside and let me see to it.’ She was about to do as he said when Sir Eudes called out to them and the bishop.

‘There is no need for her records and lists, my lord bishop,’ the knight said. He reached down and tore Siward’s tunic and shirt open, revealing his skin. ‘He is Lord Huard’s legal possession.’

Skin into which the letter H had been burned.

Fayth gaped as she realised that it had not been done with one iron carved with the letter, but by applying a long one three times against his skin to form it. As the one on Nissa’s bottom had been done. Before she could do anything, Giles whispered to her that all would be well, pushed her into Roger’s arms and loudly ordered her taken inside. He walked off without ever looking back at her.

She would not have made it back inside or up to her chambers without help, and she barely made it even with Roger’s assistance. Fayth knelt there on the floor until Emma came in and helped her to the chair.

She should have told him about Nissa and Siward. She should have told him about Edmund and his demands for help and his plans. She should have told him.

He should have told her the truth about his hand in helping Huard’s runaways, but for now he would have to try to find a way out of this.

Brice had come to him with his reports about Lord Huard’s treatment of his people and the bodies he’d found. All Eudes needed was to find one runaway, dead or alive, on his lands and he could bring Giles before the duke’s justice and demand that his lands be forfeit. An easy way to break his claim and Huard stood to gain them by proximity alone. Until now, they’d managed to get those who had escaped him to the relative safety of the rebels’ camp a few hours from his lands.

Why had Siward returned? It mattered not now, for he was caught and Giles feared he would not have enough time or a way to help him escape again.

‘My lord bishop,’ Giles began without a clue as to what to say next. Eudes helped him.

‘No, my lords, with this mark as proof, we need not wait on any decisions or scrolls. Raoul, take this—’ he kicked Siward again ‘—back to Lord Huard’s keep.’

There was no way that the rebels could take down eight mounted knights if they were alerted to this, so Giles knew he must even the odds somehow. Two they could manage. He walked over to the bishop to try to gain his help. Eudes was not going to make this easy for him.

‘As Lord Huard’s man, I would say it would be within his rights to search the rest of the village for other escaped slaves now that we found this one, my lord,’ Eudes stated, staring him down. ‘Should I send this one back to the keep with my men or should I search the rest of your village, my lord?’

Damn! He knew! The only thing Giles could do was capitulate and hope to get word to the others. He leaned in close to the bishop, informed him about his suspicions over the dead bodies—whether they were his or Huard’s villeins mattered not—and asked that Eudes’s men be limited if they were travelling unaccompanied across his lands.

For reasons known only to the bishop, the former Father Obert agreed and gave the orders. Looking over the heads of the crowd, Giles found Brice, having arrived during this scene, and signalled him to move on their plans. By the time two of Eudes’s men left Taerford, Brice had already sent his message to the rebels to intercept them.

The crowd dispersed and Giles went in search of Fayth. Emma was just coming down and told him of the lady’s condition and he decided he would not upset her more now. With a word to Emma, he left the keep to find Brice on his return and to come up with a plan to find Edmund.

If only she could trust him.

Fayth lay abed the rest of the afternoon. Her stomach finally settled and she managed to keep some broth and watered ale down. She dared not leave the room lest Giles discover she had disobeyed him once again.

She considered her actions and realised that once more she had fallen head first into trouble. Before Giles had arrived, she had made nary a misstep, she had known her place and her duties and none could have called her incompetent. Now, she was nothing like the daughter of Bertram used to be. Not used to reporting her actions to anyone while her father was away, and not accustomed to asking for guidance, she had had her life turned upside down by this man.

However, these were dangerous times and never could she remember an action of hers resulting in someone’s death until she’d fallen in with Edmund’s plan. Now, in addition to the men who died fighting Giles, she must add Siward to the list on her conscience.

Fayth knew she must stop her rash behaviour and, if she was committed to her promise to Giles, she must trust him with the truth and allow him to choose the right course of action for them.

And that meant telling him where the outlaws’ northern camp was, and where he would find Edmund.

She had no choice, too much hung in the balance. If Edmund had heeded her warning he would be long gone from this area, seeking his relatives in Northumbria or beyond.

Reconciled to her decision, she waited for Giles to come to her so that she might prove her love and her trust to him. She’d nearly ruined it yet again, but she was certain he would give her another chance. He’d whispered all would be well to her and she could only hope it would be so.

Her head was still spinning from her bout of stomach sickness, so she lay back on the bed to rest. The sun was much lower and the room grew dark when she opened her eyes. This time the man who stood in the shadows of the room was not her husband.

The evening meal was laid by the time Giles could seek Fayth out to explain. The day had gone from bad to worse, then even worse, and each time he had thought to go to her another catastrophe had occurred requiring his attention. After the disastrous morning and then the incident with Siward, he’d been called to the training yards where a fight had broken out.

Like a melee, it had swarmed across the yard, men fighting with fists and kicks until just the guards along the walls had remained uninvolved. Since he could not use bows and arrows on his own unarmed men, he had had to wait for them to wear themselves out. Roger and Lucien were yet looking for the reason for the outbreak, but he did know that it involved Lady Fayth somehow, with some insults being bandied around regarding the debacle involving Siward.

And all of this under the watchful gaze of Bishop Obert.

The bishop strolled through the keep and yard, visited the village, spoke with Giles’s men, the peasants, Father Henry and anyone else he saw. And he said nothing.

He’d intervened when Giles had asked about retaining Eudes, but otherwise he seemed to take no action at all, other than saying Mass each morning and joining Father Henry in other prayer devotions.

Would he be given a chance to defend his actions before the bishop returned to the duke? Giles wondered. And how much time did he have?

Giles climbed the stairs, intent on first explaining his actions regarding Siward to Fayth and then bringing her down to the hall to eat. Her people, he was learning, became very nervous when they did not see her for several days in a row, as evidenced on his arrival, and then these last days. Hopefully her stomach ailment had ceased, but then even he had felt the need to empty his stomach when he had seen the marks on Siward’s chest.

Giles listened at the door, but he heard no movements inside. Mayhap she still slept? He lifted the latch and pushed slowly on the door. The chamber was dark, no candles were lit and it appeared that Fayth was not inside. Lighting a candle from the barely burning embers in the hearth, he looked around once more.

The room was empty.

He called her name and went to the storage room next, but the other chambers on the same floor were all empty.

Without raising an alarm, he moved through the keep searching for Fayth, but there was no sign of her. Now that the sun was down, there was no way to search the village or the roads.

Dear God, he prayed she was not on the road!

Eudes had left for Huard’s keep not an hour before, and he could not even think about what could happen if the knight came upon her alone. More likely, she was in the chapel speaking with Father Henry. Giles would not be happy that she disobeyed him yet again, but if it was to seek the good priest’s counsel or to give her confession he would not object.

He alerted Brice and they made their way throughout the rest of Taerford Manor, finding no one who could remember speaking to her that day. On circling back to the keep and talking to all the guards, they still could find no sign of her.

Now Giles was really worried. He went back to their chambers and searched again with more candles and Brice’s help. When he realised that the carved wooden casket that she kept her ribbons and other personal belongings in was no longer in her clothing chest, he grew more concerned. But when he found her parents’ betrothal rings on the floor next to the bed, he was terrified for her.

If she’d left him, if Edmund had come for her while she believed her husband would take no action to help Siward and the others, and if she still believed him to be just a heartless Norman lord, she would not have left this behind.

Not willingly.

And while his heart pounded with terror at the thought of losing her, he also fought the fear that she would leave him for Edmund. No, she had said she loved him. Though the thought of a lady such as her loving a bastard knight such as him would have been impossible just months before, now he knew it could happen.

He needed to find her.